The Tome of Bill Compendium Vol. 1 (Books 1-4) (47 page)

“For the last time, Sally’s not my secretary.”

“Your loss, dude. Personally, I wouldn’t mind calling her into my office for a little dictation.”

Ed sipped on his coffee and replied, “
Little
is an apt word to describe any dictation you’d be giving.”

Tom just smiled back at him. “I’m pretty sure my date tonight would disagree.”

Oh, enough of this crap! It was time to show these fuckers who was really the king around these parts. “Speaking of dates, I had one this week that puts all of your sad, pathetic little lives to shame,” I said with my best arrogant sneer. Once I was sure I had their attention, I continued, “So, do you guys wanna hear about China or not?”

* * *

I filled them in on my adventures on the other side of the world from start to finish, making it a point to pay extra attention to my day of unrelenting lust. By the time I was finished, a good hour had been killed.

I concluded my tale with, “So what do you think? Pretty goddamn intense, eh?”

My roommates gave each other a glance from across the table. Finally, Tom spoke up. “Three chicks, huh?” I nodded smugly. “And do you happen to have any proof of this holy grail of scoredom?”

“What do you mean,
proof
?” I asked.

“Exactly that,” he said. “We’re talking panties, interesting marks on your body, video...”

Ed jumped in, “In short, what we’re trying to say is: pics, or it didn’t happen.”

“My cell phone was dead,” I replied.

“Likely story.”

“Seriously. Have you ever been to a Mongolian vampire village? We’re talking
Gilligan’s Island
here...like Robinson Crusoe, it’s as primitive as can be.”

“Uh huh.”

“Oh, come on,” I spat. “Don’t tell me you think I’m making this shit up.”

“Well, I mean, look at it from our viewpoint,” Tom replied. “No pics. No witnesses. Seems a bit too convenient to me.”

Ed nodded. “You gotta admit, Bill, this sounds suspiciously like the ‘old girlfriend from Canada’ routine.”

“We’re not in high school,” I pointed out.

“And you have to admit you’re probably a little vulnerable right now,” Tom added with a condescending tone. “I’ve been dating Christy. Ed asked out your uber-hot sidekick. No one would blame you for feeling a little
inadequate
after your little failure to ask out that prospect from your office.”

I turned to Ed. “You
told
him?”

“How could I not?” he replied with a shrug.

“My god, I’m surrounded by assholes,” I said, putting my head in my hands.

* * *

They let me wallow in my own misery, standup guys that they were, for a few minutes before Ed changed the subject. “I think we’re overlooking something major here. Forgetting Bill’s imaginary orgies for a second, what the hell would be ballsy enough to take on a bunch of pissed off vampires? That’s the part that worries me. If there’s something nastier out there than your buddies, Bill, I’d sure as shit like to know about it.”

“No idea,” I said, eager to move away from any further mental torment, lest they convince me that the whole thing happened only in my head. Fuck them and their Vulcan mind tricks!

“Did you see whatever it was?”

“Only glimpses,” I replied. “Whatever they were, they were big motherfuckers.”

“Werewolves?” Tom asked.

“Nah. I don’t think so,” I replied. “Besides, didn’t Sally say werewolves were just make believe?”

“She could’ve lied,” he countered, a little defensively. “I don’t know about you, but it just doesn’t seem fair to live in a world where vampires exist and werewolves don’t. I mean, if there’s no war between the vamps and the lycans, then there’s no reason for Kate Beckinsale to run around in skintight leather.”

“Girlfriend or not, you really need to get out more,” Ed said.

“And yet you both dare to pity me,” I pointed out before getting back on track. “No, let’s assume Sally wasn’t bullshitting us...at least this once. That still leaves us with something really nasty out there. Whatever it was, it wasn’t human - and it sure as shit wasn’t afraid of vampires.”

“Why can’t supernatural monsters ever be friendly?” Tom asked.

“Tell me about it. I’d just about give my left kidney to meet
Casper
and find out he was an honest to goodness friendly ghost.”

“Did this Khan guy...” Ed said, and then immediately held up his hand to Tom, “no Trek jokes. Save it for later.” He then continued, “Did the Khan give you anything on them?”

“He wasn’t all that talkative. Not a whole lot of deep meaningful conversation coming out of that one...unless you speak Mongolian, that is.”

“What about from your buddy Ozymandias?”

“James? No. He was a little evasive. Said I didn’t need to know, that I was safe in the city...oh wait! I think he called them something.”

“What?”

“Not sure,” I replied. “I was kind of busy shitting my pants at the time. What the fuck did he call them?” I thought about it for a second. “It was something that started with an A, I think.”

“Alligator?” Tom chimed in. “Maybe the vampires are warring with the alligator people.”

I sighed, turning to him. “You know, you might want to give a warning to your new girlfriend. She should avoid trying to fuck your brains out, since you already have a major deficiency in that department.”

“Let’s concentrate here,” said Ed. “
A
...what, Bill?”

“No idea.”

“Maybe we should get the dictionary. We could start going through the A’s for anything that sounded threatening.”

“You’re out of your mind,” replied Tom. “We do that, and we’ll be up
all
fucking night.”

“All!” I suddenly shouted. Something about that word rang a bell.

“All what?”

“It was all-something,” I said, trying to concentrate. “Give me a second. It’s right on the tip of my tongue. All...all...alma! I think he called them the alma.”

“What the fuck’s an alma?” asked Ed.

“Sounds like a fat chick name,” Tom said, rather unhelpfully.

“I’m pretty sure the vampires weren’t attacked by a pack of fat chicks.”

“Maybe they heard that vampires were made of cake,” he replied with a dickheaded smirk.

I turned back to Ed. “Let’s ignore him now, shall we?”

“Gladly. Well, it’s not much to go on, but I guess we can look into it,” Ed yawned. “But maybe tomorrow. I don’t know about you guys, but I’m kind of beat.”

“Sally took that much out of you?”

“Heh,” he chuckled. “When you’re dating a girl like her, you tend to overanalyze even the smallest of things. You know, stuff like will she rip my arm out of its socket if I try to hold her hand? It makes for a slightly more stressful than average evening.”

The thing about phantom, non-immediate threats is that they tend to fall off the priority list pretty quickly. Thus our research into giant vampire-hating beasts was almost immediately derailed by our normal everyday activities, be that as they may. A quick check of my email the next morning provided me with the realization that I’d missed several days of work without bothering to let anybody know. I may be an immortal creature of the night, but I was young enough that the fear of unemployment was still ingrained into my mind. I thus kicked my ass into high gear and dove straight into work, all thoughts of Mongolian mist monsters forgotten.

My roommates must have also gotten back to tending their lives because it didn’t come up again in conversation, at least in the following days. Fortunately for me, I was still technically on my vampirecation, thus between my nights being free (
yeah, yeah, I don’t need to be reminded of how pathetic that is
) and my enhanced vampiric typing speed, I was able to catch up to my workload in just a couple of days and maybe even push a little bit ahead of schedule.

In some ways, those few days were kind of nice. Aside from my powers and tendency to drench all my food in blood, I actually felt kind of normal. It was relaxing.

Needless to say, it didn’t last.

On Thursday night, I got a somewhat frantic call from Sally. Tom was out with Christy again, and Ed was off puttering around somewhere. It was probably for the best, as they’d no doubt want to tag along on any adventures I was stupid enough to find myself in. Anyway, my phone rang, and Sally’s melodious voice greeted me.

“I think you need to get over here.”

“What - no hello, how are you?”

“We don’t have time for this crap, Bill.”

“We never just talk anymore,” I said with a fake sigh and then smiled. Regardless of the urgency, it felt good to have Sally on the receiving end for a change. “Okay, so what’s up?”

“There’s
something
here!”

“Define something and here.”

She mumbled something under her breath before continuing. I didn’t catch it, but I would have bet money that there was also an accompanying eye-roll. “I’m here outside of the office. Something just burst in a little while ago, and all hell broke loose. Whatever it is, it’s been calling your name.”

“My name?” Oh, there came that sinking feeling again.

“Yes,
your
name.”

“Did you see what it was?”

There was a pause. “No, I...”

“You
what
?”

“Fine! As soon as the ruckus started, I got out of there.”

“Nice display of leadership, MacArthur,” I quipped.

“Fuck you.”

“I knew one day you’d beg me for it.” Hot damn, I was loving this. Although if something had Sally frazzled, then perhaps it might not be the best time to enjoy rubbing it in. Ah, fuck it! I could help out
and
enjoy her discomfort at the same time. “Okay, aside from running away, have you done anything?”

“I sent Brian and Dusk Reaper in to see if they could root it out.” She was no doubt swallowing whatever venom she wanted to hurl at me.

“And?”

“And Dusk Reaper came back out...or ran back out. Brian didn’t.”

Shit! I was kind of hoping it would have been Dusk Reaper who bought it. That guy was a serious douchebag. Yeah, I know, horrible thing to say, but well deserved - trust me on this. “Alright I’m heading over. Try to barricade the door until I get there.”

“Way ahead of you,
boss
,” she said and hung up.

Great! A rampaging beast was just dandy all in and of itself. A rampaging beast that knew my name - well, that was...actually, that wasn’t particularly surprising. I had almost started to expect things like that to happen. Weird. That still didn’t solve the mystery of
what
was causing chaos in the coven’s office, but it took the edge off a little bit.

I paused for a moment before leaving, very much considering borrowing the shotgun that Ed kept stashed under his bed. He’d appropriated it back when we had to deal with Jeff. It had served him well in that ordeal, assuming you consider blowing the head off our geriatric former neighbor to be a check in the win column. Poor Mrs. Caven. Jeff had kidnapped her, wrongly assuming her to be my mother, and had subsequently turned her into a bloodthirsty monster. We attempted to rescue her but had been too late to do anything more than put her down for good.

Oh well, no use crying over spilled milk.

Considering I had half a city and several trains to traverse before reaching my destination, I decided against the gun. It was almost a pity to do so. Note to self: talk to Sally about stocking a small arsenal on coven premises. Actually, scratch that. Now that I thought about it, the words
Sally
and
arsenal
in the same sentence kind of gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I thus grabbed my jacket, and, armed only with my wits, headed off to save the day...hopefully.

* * *

I arrived at the office about an hour later, which, all things considered, was a pretty good pace - although thinking about breaking my midtown commuting record was probably something I shouldn’t have been worrying about right at that moment in time. But hey, sometimes it’s the little victories that really matter.

I walked up to our floor and came upon Sally, Dusk Reaper, and a few other assorted coven members standing outside the main doors.

“Where the fuck have you been?” Sally hissed. She was clearly having a bit of a stressful day. I didn’t make it any better.

“Nice to see you, too. Sorry; I would have been here sooner, but I had a brief moment of sanity in which I had to question the wisdom of facing an unknown monster that’s been shouting my name. Fortunately for you, it didn’t last.” She wasn’t so stressed so as to spare me the eye-roll I knew was coming from that one. The pleasantries finished, I continued. “So did any of you see anything?”

“I did,” answered Dusk Reaper.

On the train, I had some time to think about what might be after me and thus had a theory. Not sure how it would have gotten here. Then again, a few months ago I didn’t even believe in vampires. So who was I to say what was and wasn’t possible? “Let me guess,” I said to Dipshit Reaper, “about nine feet tall, built like a bulldozer, and screams a lot?”

“No,” he replied.

“
No
?” Okay, that was unexpected. Not that I should be all that sad about it. Facing off against a creature that had almost turned my rib cage into paste wasn’t exactly número uno on my priority list. “What did it look like then?” I asked with a little uncertainty.

“I’m not really sure,” Dusk Reaper said. “It was too fast to get a good look at. I think it was pretty small, but I’ve never seen anything move like that. It was like this tiny little whirlwind. It went after Brian before I could even think of doing anything, and...”